Here is a cool video (shot by Alli) of our descent to the "yellow submarine" guided by Mark Patterson, a former aquanaut. You can see me pop up in the wet porch and try to figure out where I should hang my tank (I was quickly rescued by Mark who poked his head in and put my tank on the rack.)

Breathing air and being able to talk underwater is weird: really weird. I have gotten so used to hand-signals and writing tablets over the past week that it seemed revolutionary to be able to pop my head up, take my regulator out and introduce myself. The person that I was introducing myself to was Mark Hulsbeck (aka Otter) who came bearing fresh towels and gave us a tour of Aquarius. We had to rinse all the salt off and don a clean t-shirt before heading into the habitat. Unfortunately, we don't have footage from inside Aquarius because our Go-Pro camera had to be submerged in a bucket so that it didn't trap air while we were inside. Any air inside could expand as we head to the surface causing the underwater case to leak or burst! Once inside we chatted with Grace who was listening to the aquanauts out on the reef and she showed us some of the cool videos that she is taking with her high speed camera. As a right of passage we were fed Goldfish and M&Ms before sitting down at the kitchen table to begin our chat. It was definitely a surreal experience being able to look out a porthole and see all my labmatesworking on their science projects with the aquanauts. There were even two spotted eagle rays that kept cruising by the window during our trip.

Me, Alli, and Ryan LaPete preparing for the broadcast inside Aquarius. Note the goldfish and tiny Tardis at the bottom of the frame. Photo: Francis Choi, Northeastern University

If you want to watch a recording of our Skype chat it will be available here tomorrow, and there will be another live Skype on Thursday that you can watch here.

There should be another update from the surface team tomorrow. We have a lot more science to do.

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THe nu Surface Team﻿

We are graduate students and faculty from the Marine Science Center at Northeastern University. We will be sharing our personal daily Mission 31 experiences here! Visit northeastern.edu/mission31 to learn more about who we are and about the science that we will be doing with Fabien during the second half of Mission 31.